This essay introduces a cluster of articles titled “Devalued Currency: An Elegiac Symposium on Paradigm Shifts.” Eagleton's piece addresses, from a perspective indebted to Walter Benjamin, the notion of Thomas Kuhn that “shifts” in the controlling paradigms of disciplines and practices are entirely transformative not only of their futures but also of their pasts. Benjamin argued that a work of art is a set of potentials that may or may not be realized in the vicissitudes of its afterlife. The true (...) significance of works might be said, therefore, to emerge only after some as-yet-unexpected event or upheaval makes their significance apparent. In this sense, we might argue that historical events make full sense only in the light of “judgment day”; until then, history remains an incoherent chronicle. But the totality that will one day be revealed cannot be anticipated. The past is open-ended because the present is, and meanwhile, the meaning of history is in our hands to change. Since we have that power, Eagleton suggests that we recycle figures of the past as characters in a comedy rather than tragedy. Still, it is never possible to say which figures of the past and which works are ultimately important and which are not, because we cannot say which mutations will result in major developments to come. No work or person is important or peripheral in itself or himself; it is the critic and historian who render them so. (shrink)

Impossible Presence brings together new work in film studies, critical theory, art history, and anthropology for a multifaceted exploration of the continuing proliferation of visual images in the modern era. It also asks what this proliferation—and the changing technologies that support it—mean for the ways in which images are read today and how they communicate with viewers and spectators. Framed by Terry Smith's introduction, the essays focus on two kinds of strangeness involved in experiencing visual images in the modern (...) era. The first, explored in the book's first half, involves the appearance of oddities or phantasmagoria in early photographs and cinema. The second type of strangeness involves art from marginalized groups and indigenous peoples, and the communicative formations that result from the trafficking of images between people from vastly different cultures. With a stellar list of contributors, Impossible Presence offers a wide-ranging look at the fate of the visual image in modernity, modern art, and popular culture. Contributors: Jean Baudrillard Marshall Berman Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe Elizabeth Grosz Tom Gunning Peter Hutchings Fred R. Myers Javier Sanjines Richard Shiff Hugh J. Silverman Terry Smith. (shrink)

David Ricardo was the leading political economist of the early nineteenth century. This book presents a reconstruction of the substance and evolution of Ricardo's thought on the interrelated topics of value, distribution and accumulation. It also provides a detailed summary of, and critical commentary on, the vast secondary literature. The author rejects Sraffa's influential 'corn model' interpretation of Ricardo's early writings; the alleged similarity between the work of Ricardo and Sraffa; the Hollander and Hicks view of Ricardo's treatment of wages; (...) and the neoclassical interpretation of Marshall and others. He also addresses the role of Ricardo's labour theory of value in his analysis, and Marx's interpretation of it. Dr Peach argues that Ricardo's work has been persistently, and sometimes wilfully, misinterpreted, and that this can be remedied only through an attempt to understand Ricardo's writings in his terms, taking account of his objectives. (shrink)

Policy Review, the organ of the conservative Heritage Foundation, devoted their winter 1984 issue to lamenting the failures of the Reagan administration. Publisher M. Stan ton Evans complained that “This has been essentially another Ford Administration, … not much different from any other Republican administration in our lifetime. While the other Senator from Colorado, arch-conservative William Armstrong noted that Reagan had ‘managed to polarize the country over budget cuts that didn't happen.” “He cut the budget,” bemoaned Armstrong, “enough to make (...) the special interests and the press mad, but not enough” to restructure the government. For his part, National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) chair Terry Donlan has complained of the administration failure to move on its social agenda. (shrink)

In Oregon, doctors are allowed to kill patients who are terminal and want to die. In Vermont, they're debating whether to do that. And in Holland, they not only allow euthanasia, but also at least two doctors there are killing babies born with catastrophic illness.

Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons have recently presented a series of papers in which they argue against what has come to be called the ‘new wave’ moral realism and moral semantics of David Brink, Richard Boyd, Peter Railton, and a number of other philosophers. The central idea behind Horgan and Timmons’s criticism of these ‘new wave’ theories has been extended by Sean Holland to include the sort of realism that drops out of response-dependent accounts that make use of (...) an analogy between moral properties and secondary qualities. This paper argues that Holland’s extension depends crucially on the fact that his target is a direct response-dependent account of moral value. His argument does not work against such accounts of more basic normative notions such as ‘harm’ or ‘benefit’. And these more basic notions may then serve as the basic normative building blocks for an indirectly response-dependent moral theory. (shrink)

Explores some steps toward non-assimilative encounters in the "global village.".

In this provocative book, Fred Dretske argues that to achieve an understanding of the mind it is not enough to understand the biological machinery by means of...

The Phenomenology of Spirit is both one of Hegel's most widely read books and one of his most obscure. The book is the most detailed commentary on Hegel's work available. It develops an independent philosophical account of the general theory of knowledge, culture, and history presented in the Phenomenology. In a clear and straightforward style, Terry Pinkard reconstructs Hegel's theoretical philosophy and shows its connection to ethical and political theory. He sets the work in a historical context and shows (...) the contemporary relevance of Hegel's thought for European and Anglo-American philosophers. The principal audience for the book is teachers and students of philosophy, but the great interest in Hegel's work and the clarity of Pinkard's exposition ensure that historians of ideas, political scientists, and literary theorists will also read it. (shrink)

In the second half of the eighteenth century, German philosophy came for a while to dominate European philosophy. It changed the way in which not only Europeans, but people all over the world, conceived of themselves and thought about nature, religion, human history, politics, and the structure of the human mind. In this rich and wide-ranging book, Terry Pinkard interweaves the story of 'Germany' - changing during this period from a loose collection of principalities into a newly-emerged nation with (...) a distinctive culture - with an examination of the currents and complexities of its developing philosophical thought. He examines the dominant influence of Kant, with his revolutionary emphasis on 'self-determination', and traces this influence through the development of romanticism and idealism to the critiques of post-Kantian thinkers such as Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard. His book will interest a range of readers in the history of philosophy, cultural history and the history of ideas. (shrink)

In a virtuoso display of erudition, thoughtfulness and humour, Terry Eagleton teases apart the concept of hope as it has been conceptualised over six millennia, from ancient Greece to today. He distinguishes hope from simple optimism, cheeriness, desire, idealism or adherence to the doctrine of Progress, bringing into focus a standpoint that requires reflection and commitment, arises from clear-sighted rationality, can be cultivated by practice and self-discipline, and which acknowledges but refuses to capitulate to the realities of failure and (...) defeat. Authentic hope is indubitably tragic, yet Eagleton also argues for its radical implications as ‘a species of permanent revolution, whose enemy is as much political complacency as metaphysical despair’. It is a means of facing the future without devaluing the moment or obviating the past. Traversing centuries of thought about the many modes of hoping – from Ernst Bloch’s monumental work through the Stoics, Aquinas, Marx and Kierkegaard, among others – this penetrating book throws new light on religious faith and political ideology as well as issues such as the problem of evil, the role of language and the meaning of the past. Hope Without Optimism is a brilliantly engaged, impassioned chronicle of human belief and desire in an increasingly uncertain world. (shrink)

The phrase "the meaning of life" for many seems a quaint notion fit for satirical mauling by Monty Python or Douglas Adams. But in this spirited, stimulating, and quirky enquiry, famed critic Terry Eagleton takes a serious if often amusing look at the question and offers his own surprising answer. Eagleton first examines how centuries of thinkers and writers--from Marx and Schopenhauer to Shakespeare, Sartre, and Beckett--have responded to the ultimate question of meaning. He suggests, however, that it is (...) only in modern times that the question has become problematic. But instead of tackling it head-on, many of us cope with the feelings of meaninglessness in our lives by filling them with everything from football to sex, Kabbala, Scientology, "New Age softheadedness," or fundamentalism. On the other hand, Eagleton notes, many educated people believe that life is an evolutionary accident that has no intrinsic meaning. If our lives have meaning, it is something with which we manage to invest them, not something with which they come ready made. Eagleton probes this view of meaning as a kind of private enterprise, and concludes that it fails to holds up. He argues instead that the meaning of life is not a solution to a problem, but a matter of living in a certain way. It is not metaphysical but ethical. It is not something separate from life, but what makes it worth living--that is, a certain quality, depth, abundance and intensity of life. Here then is a brilliant discussion of the problem of meaning by a leading thinker, who writes with a light and often irreverent touch, but with a very serious end in mind. "If you were to ask what provides some meaning in life nowadays for a great many people, especially men, you could do worse than reply 'football.' Not many of them perhaps would be willing to admit as much; but sport stands in for all those noble causes--religious faith, national sovereignty, personal honor, ethnic identity--for which, over the centuries, people have been prepared to go to their deaths. It is sport, not religion, which is now the opium of the people.". (shrink)

Karl Polanyi's 1944 book, The Great Transformation, has been recognized as central for the field of economic sociology, but it has not been subject to the same theoretical scrutiny as other classic works in the field. This is a particular problem in that there are central tensions and complexities in Polanyi's argument. This article suggests that these tensions can be understood as a consequence of Polanyi's changing theoretical orientation. The basic outline of the book was developed in England in the (...) late 1930s when Polanyi was working within a specific type of Marxist framework. However, as he was writing the book, he developed several new concepts, including fictitious commodities and the embedded economy, that led in new directions. Because circumstances did not give him the time to revise his manuscript, the book is marked by a tension between these different moments in his own theoretical development. The result is that Polanyi glimpses the concept of the always embedded market economy, but he does not name it or elaborate it. (shrink)

Abstract According to the Deprivation Approach, the evil of death is to be explained by the fact that death deprives us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had lived longer. But the Deprivation Approach confronts a problem first discussed by Lucretius. Late birth seems to deprive us of the goods we would have enjoyed if we had been born earlier. Yet no one is troubled by late birth. So it’s hard to see why we should be troubled (...) by its temporal mirror image, early death. In a 1986 paper, Anthony Brueckner and John Martin Fischer appealed to a version of Derek Parfit’s “Bias toward the Future”; they claimed that early death deprives us of future goods that we care about, while late birth deprives us of past goods that we don’t care about. In this paper I show that the Brueckner–Fischer principle is open to several possible interpretations, but that it does not solve the Lucretius problem no matter how we understand it. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9766-6 Authors Fred Feldman, Department of Philosophy, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

Why do leaders fail ethically? In this book, Terry L. Price applies a multi-disciplinary approach to an understanding of immorality in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. He argues that leaders can know that a certain kind of behavior is generally required by morality but nonetheless be mistaken as to whether the relevant moral requirement applies to them in a particular situation and whether others are protected by this requirement. Price articulates how leaders make exceptions of themselves, explains how (...) the justificatory force of leadership gives rise to such exception-making, and develops normative prescriptions that leaders should adopt as a response to this feature of their moral psychology. (shrink)

When doctors become aware of a threat to public health, they have a professional duty to try to mitigate the threat. Climate change is a recognized major threat to planetary and public health that...

The challenge for those responsible for funding, brokering and assessing the merit of proposed Indigenous research is to identify and then work co-operatively with appropriate representatives of Indigenous interests in order to increase the flow of benefits from research to Indigenous peoples. Experience in Australia has shown that this is not a straightforward process. In this paper we indicate some reasons why it is important for the research community to broker research with representative Indigenous organisations and to involve Indigenous peoples (...) in the ethical assessment and conduct of research. We then identify some barriers to the achievement of these objectives and outline recently developed interventions from the field of health research that aim to promote a more effective working relationship between Indigenous peoples and members of the research community. (shrink)

Historically, there has been little agreement between advocates of radical financial reform and socialist theoreticians. However, in the new circumstances of the twenty-first century, a productive synthesis of these two traditions might be possible. Drawing on the franchise model of credit creation elaborated by Robert C. Hockett and the dysfunctions created by the extreme concentration of private financial institutions, this article outlines a reform agenda that would both democratize finance and facilitate the flow of funds into valuable forms of investment (...) that are currently starved for resources. If the new institutions envisioned in this proposal were able to take root and expand, they could ultimately facilitate a transition to socialism, defined as the subordination of the market to democratic politics. (shrink)

_A brilliant introduction to the philosophical concept of materialism and its relevance to contemporary science and culture_ In this eye-opening, intellectually stimulating appreciation of a fascinating school of philosophy, Terry Eagleton makes a powerful argument that materialism is at the center of today’s important scientific and cultural as well as philosophical debates. The author reveals entirely fresh ways of considering the values and beliefs of three very different materialists—Marx, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein—drawing striking comparisons between their philosophies while reflecting on (...) a wide array of topics, from ideology and history to language, ethics, and the aesthetic. Cogently demonstrating how it is our bodies and corporeal activity that make thought and consciousness possible, Eagleton’s book is a valuable exposition on philosophic thought that strikes to the heart of how we think about ourselves and live in the world. (shrink)

In this combative, controversial book, Terry Eagleton takes issue with the prejudice that Marxism is dead and done with. Taking ten of the most common objections to Marxism—that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the economic, that it is a form of historical determinism, and so on—he demonstrates in each case what a woeful travesty of Marx's own thought these assumptions are. In a world in which capitalism has been shaken to its roots by some (...) major crises, _Why Marx Was Right_ is as urgent and timely as it is brave and candid. Written with Eagleton's familiar wit, humor, and clarity, it will attract an audience far beyond the confines of academia. (shrink)

_A compelling guide to the fundamental place of humour and comedy within Western culture—by one of its greatest exponents_ Written by an acknowledged master of comedy, this study reflects on the nature of humour and the functions it serves. Why do we laugh? What are we to make of the sheer variety of laughter, from braying and cackling to sniggering and chortling? Is humour subversive, or can it defuse dissent? Can we define wit? Packed with illuminating ideas and a good (...) many excellent jokes, the book critically examines various well-known theories of humour, including the idea that it springs from incongruity and the view that it reflects a mildly sadistic form of superiority to others. Drawing on a wide range of literary and philosophical sources, Terry Eagleton moves from Aristotle and Aquinas to Hobbes, Freud, and Bakhtin, looking in particular at the psychoanalytical mechanisms underlying humour and its social and political evolution over the centuries. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill underwent a mental crisis in the 1820s. He emerged from it, argues Fred Wilson, with a new understanding of the notion of introspective analysis more dequare as an empirical method than the sort of analysis that had been used by earlier utilitarian thinkiers such as Bentham and James Mill. Wilson's study places Mill's innovations in the context of earlier work in ethics and perception and of subsequent developments in the history of psychology. He shows the significance (...) of these topics with which Mill was concerned. The more adequate notion of introspective analysis enabled the younger Mill to reply to criticisms of various empiricist and utilitarian positions cencering the analysis of relations, the nature of our percievings of physical objects, the status of science of economics, and the nature of the utilitarian principle itself. Mill was thus able to reject the quantitative hedonism of his predecessors and to introduce qualitative hedonism in its place. Wilson suggest that the long tradition that views Mill's qualitative hedonism as inconsistent is mistaken, as area a variety of criticisms of his work in the psychology of perception and the philosophy of economics. A better grasp of the background of Mill's views of psychology and the philosophy of psychology easily shows the critics to be mistaken. (shrink)

In this combative, controversial book, Terry Eagleton takes issue with the prejudice that Marxism is dead and done with. Taking ten of the most common objections to Marxism—that it leads to political tyranny, that it reduces everything to the economic, that it is a form of historical determinism, and so on—he demonstrates in each case what a woeful travesty of Marx's own thought these assumptions are. In a world in which capitalism has been shaken to its roots by some (...) major crises, _Why Marx Was Right_ is as urgent and timely as it is brave and candid. Written with Eagleton's familiar wit, humor, and clarity, it will attract an audience far beyond the confines of academia. (shrink)

The result is a one-dimensional, economistic and bleakly utilitarian conception of the educational task.In Mindfulness and Learning: Celebrating the Affective Dimension of Education, Terry Hyland advances the thesis that education stands in ...

_New observations on the persistence of God in modern times and why “authentic” atheism is so very hard to come by_ How to live in a supposedly faithless world threatened by religious fundamentalism? Terry Eagleton, formidable thinker and renowned cultural critic, investigates in this thought-provoking book the contradictions, difficulties, and significance of the modern search for a replacement for God. Engaging with a phenomenally wide range of ideas, issues, and thinkers from the Enlightenment to today, Eagleton discusses the state (...) of religion before and after 9/11, the ironies surrounding Western capitalism’s part in spawning not only secularism but also fundamentalism, and the unsatisfactory surrogates for the Almighty invented in the post-Enlightenment era. The author reflects on the unique capacities of religion, the possibilities of culture and art as modern paths to salvation, the so-called war on terror’s impact on atheism, and a host of other topics of concern to those who envision a future in which just and compassionate communities thrive. Lucid, stylish, and entertaining in his usual manner, Eagleton presents a brilliant survey of modern thought that also serves as a timely, urgently needed intervention into our perilous political present. (shrink)

In this major new book, Terry Eagleton, one of the world’s greatest cultural theorists, writes with wit, eloquence and clarity on the question of ethics. Providing rare insights into tragedy, politics, literature, morality and religion, Eagleton examines key ethical theories through the framework of Jacques Lacan’s categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real, measuring them against the ‘richer’ ethical resources of socialism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition. a major new book from Terry Eagleton, one of the world’s (...) greatest cultural theorists investigates ethical theories from Aristotle to Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek engages with the whole modern European tradition of thought about ethics brings together personal and political ethics and makes a passionate case for political love. (shrink)

In this major new book, Terry Eagleton, one of the world’s greatest cultural theorists, writes with wit, eloquence and clarity on the question of ethics. Providing rare insights into tragedy, politics, literature, morality and religion, Eagleton examines key ethical theories through the framework of Jacques Lacan’s categories of the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real, measuring them against the ‘richer’ ethical resources of socialism and the Judaeo-Christian tradition. a major new book from Terry Eagleton, one of the world’s (...) greatest cultural theorists investigates ethical theories from Aristotle to Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek engages with the whole modern European tradition of thought about ethics brings together personal and political ethics and makes a passionate case for political love. (shrink)

In this witty, accessible study, the prominent Marxist thinker Terry Eagleton launches a surprising defense of the reality of evil, drawing on literary, theological, and psychoanalytic sources to suggest that evil, no mere medieval artifact, is a real phenomenon with palpable force in our contemporary world. In a book that ranges from St. Augustine to alcoholism, Thomas Aquinas to Thomas Mann, Shakespeare to the Holocaust, Eagleton investigates the frightful plight of those doomed souls who apparently destroy for no reason. (...) In the process, he poses a set of intriguing questions. Is evil really a kind of nothingness? Why should it appear so glamorous and seductive? Why does goodness seem so boring? Is it really possible for human beings to delight in destruction for no reason at all? (shrink)

This outstanding collection of specially commissioned chapters examines German idealism from several angles and assesses the renewed interest in the subject from a wide range of fields. Including discussions of the key representatives of German idealism such as Kant, Fichte and Hegel, it is structured in clear sections dealing with: metaphysics the legacy of Hegel’s philosophy Brandom and Hegel recognition and agency autonomy and nature the philosophy of German romanticism. Amongst other important topics, _German Idealism: Historical and Philosophical Perspectives_ addresses (...) the debates surrounding the metaphysical and epistemological legacy of German idealism; its importance for understanding recent debates in moral and political thought; its appropriation in recent theories of language and the relationship between mind and world; and how German idealism affected subsequent movements such as romanticism, pragmatism, and critical theory. _Contributors:_ Espen Hammer, Stephen Houlgate, Sebastian Gardner, Paul Redding, Andrew Bowie, Richard Eldridge, Jay Bernstein, Frederick Beiser, Paul Franks, Robert Pippin, Fred Rush, Manfred Frank, Terry Pinkard, Robert Stern. (shrink)